Donuts, the owner of the largest portfolio of new gTLDs, announced it has added another one. Domain .IRISH is now operated by Donuts. Initially, the domain was delegated to an American company Dot-Irish LLC, which was founded by entrepreneurs with Irish and Northern Irish roots.
Plans of Dot-Irish LLC were very ambitious. Representatives of the company kept stressing that citizens of the Republic of Ireland are 6 million people. However, there are about 80 million more in the Irish diaspora all over the world. However, it seems that all those Irish people were not so thrilled to register names in the new “Irish” domain. Domain Incite reports that in the last 1.5 years since the launch of .IRISH less than 2 thousand names were registered in the domain. Probably, the reason is that the price is too high: the majority of large registrars offer names in this new gTLD for about US$40-50 per year.
The deal to sell .IRISH was made back in November, its financial details haven’t been disclosed. Representatives of Donuts point out that .IRISH domain will be fully integrated in the administrative and technological infrastructure of the company by early March next year. Observers believe that Donuts expects to arrange some kind of domain restart on Saint Patrick’s Day, Ireland’s patron saint, which is celebrated on March 17th and is believed to be the main holiday for all Irish people. Domain .IRISH has become 198th new gTLD in Donuts’ collection.
